Black Hole

An artist's conception of an ancient black hole. In 1974, Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes could slowly evaporate, and eventually explode. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Milestone: Black hole radiation theorized Date: March 1, 1974 Where: Cambridge, England Who: Stephen Hawking In 1974, a brilliant 32-year-old physicist published a not-quite-two-page paper…

When a massive star runs out of fuel, its core collapses. This collapse releases a flood of neutrinos, which push a shock wave outward through the star’s layers. If the shock is strong enough, it blasts the outer layers into space, creating a supernova. If the shock is too weak,…

An artist's rendering of a swirling corona above a black hole's accretion disk. New research reveals an ancient black hole whose corona may be helping it break some major cosmic rules. (Image credit: NASA/Aurore Simonnet (Sonoma State University)) A surprisingly ravenous black hole from the dawn of the universe is…

A view of the Andromeda galaxy, the closest major galaxy to the Milky Way galaxy. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Theory shows that stars can collapse directly into black holes without first exploding as supernovae. In fact, this should be a relatively common occurrence. But despite that, astronomers have found scant observational…

A lightning-fast pulsar near our galaxy’s black hole could unlock new secrets about gravity and spacetime. Scientists at Columbia University working with Breakthrough Listen, a research initiative dedicated to searching for evidence of civilizations beyond Earth, have announced new findings from the Breakthrough Listen Galactic Center Survey...Read More

(Main) An illustration of the supermassive black hole M87* (Inset) the NASA/JAXA mission XRISM (Image credit: S. Dagnello/NRAO/AUI/NSF/ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab) Scientists have dived deeper into the "eye of the storm" swirling around supermassive black holes than ever before. This unprecedented investigation of the turbulent…

There may be a newly identified early phase of supermassive black hole growth...Read More

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An exotic type of dark matter could explain some of the characteristics of our galaxy’s central supermassive black hole, but many cosmologists are leery of the idea...Read More

An illustration of a tidal disruption event in which a star is devoured by a black hole. (Image credit: ESA/C. Carreau) Astronomers have discovered that an unusual optical flare is the result of a star being ripped apart and devoured by a black hole — and what really sets this…